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6 Beloved Pop Culture Icons With Hateful Histories

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You know, it’s true what they say: “never meet your idols”. All of us have that one book, movie, or song that you can read/watch time and time again, stuff that really resonates with us. I don’t know about you, but I rarely think of the author/performer when I’m “in the zone”, because I’m always scared of discovering something nasty about them. And sometimes those fears come true. Here are 5 pop culture icons with hateful histories.

Sherlock Holmes
If someone asked you to name one famous fictional character of the 19th-century, you’d most likely say Sherlock Holmes. He’s that genius detective guy who got himself something like 10 movies, 59 TV shows, and was referenced a few million times in all other media. Thing is, Holmes’ own creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, hated that character with a passion! You see, as a young author, Arthur wrote about all sorts of weird things just to keep the readers coming for more (to that I can relate), so his works touched topics like man-eating plants and mummies, until he caught his big break with Sherlock Holmes. However, Doyle always thought of Holmes as cheap and hacky, for some reason. He even decided to kill Holmes, along with Moriarty, because his own creation was overshadowing the author himself, and people kept crying for more. Eventually he brought the detective back to life, and continued to write those amazing novels, even though he hated himself for doing it.

Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
We all have great memories of the 1971 film adaptation of the novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, but one man who would not stand for that train wreck of a movie, was actually the author of the novel himself – Roald Dahl. He hated that the movie was watered down, leaving out a lot of the source material’s sinister schemes behind. I mean, he didn’t even like Gene Wilder, not to mention the musical numbers. In his eyes it should’ve been a lot creepier and a lot less kid-friendly. Again, I can relate to the man.